Night Anxiety: Signs, Symptoms and Top Methods to Prevent Anxiety at Night

Your night anxiety makes you almost dread going to bed. It takes you hours to fall asleep and disturbing and frightening thoughts take control over your mind, until you have a full-blown anxiety attack.

People who suffer from night anxiety may also experience hideous dreams that make no sense at all. You wake up feeling awful. You just know that you’re going to be a wreck again tomorrow.

Why? What keeps triggering these night anxiety attacks, especially when you’re in bed at night?

According to Health.com, “The relative isolation, quiet, and absence of distractions are probably the big factor here. During the day, we can use a variety of strategies to modulate these concerns, including taking direct action to address them. Lying in bed in a dark room, they become overwhelming and inescapable.”

The Insomnia-Anxiety Link

You may not be aware of it, but your anxiety could be caused by a sleep disorder. Insomnia fuels a cycle of anxiety. Insomnia makes it hard to fall asleep. You toss and turn and the anxious thoughts appear. Am I going to lose my job? What’s going to happen at that doctor’s appointment? Did I forget my pants at the dry cleaners?

Insomniacs anticipate problems with sleep. Even before they lie down at night, the anxious thoughts are already there, fueling the vicious night anxiety cycle. Specialists call this “catastrophizing.” It’s almost a sense of learned hopelessness.

How to Prevent Night Anxiety

To prevent anxiety at night, the most important thing to do is to NOT lie in bed and try to fall asleep. Get up and do something else, in another room, until you are truly sleepy. This way you can reduce negative thinking and anxiety out of your bed room.

Here are a few great ways to prevent night-time anxiety:

1. Avoiding prescription drugs – I have tried that out – and it gave me a little relief – but the goal is to get through night anxiety without creating another problem – chemical dependency. Besides, these drugs will never cure the condition, only temporarily relieve symptoms.

2. Avoiding caffeine, nicotine or wine in the evening- these only made the problem worse. I actually tried living with or without them and witnessed the difference. These can actually make your attacks worse and caffeine can actually give you insomnia, thus you can’t sleep at all.

Turn the clock around to face the wall, or hide it in a drawer or under the bed. I was constantly checking the time and that reinforced my thought that I’ll never get back to sleep.

Don’t stay in bed more than 15 minutes. I used to do this to remind my brain that the bed is the place to sleep – not the place for stressing, worrying and obsessing.

Don’t go back to bed too soon. I only went back to bed when I felt I could fall asleep right away. I watched, on purpose, a boring TV show or read a boring book.

Before going to sleep, try to watch something funny on TV. Never an action film or sad drama. Something light, funny and even stupid. Give your brain a break and a chance to escape from everyday worries.

What to Do If You Can’t Handle This on Your Own

If your middle-of-the-night anxiety becomes too much to overcome on your own, cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques can really sessions help you find strategies to cope.

I have horrible anxiety attacks that can be triggered by the simplest things... and also by things that i know wont happen but will still panic for no reason. For example My Boyfriend and i went out the other night with his boss and his wife whom ive met before... The bosses wife's sister was the bartender and kept starring at my boyfriend and i noticed and im not the jealous type but it made the wheels turn because this is his bosses sister in law... and now i just have this anxiety that his boss is going to try. To hook them up and i will be out of the pic. I also have anxiety that i am not good enough or pretty enough to keep this amazing man in my life... please if anyone can help me ease these crazy attacks... I have suffered from anxiety since i was 14 i am now 24 and it seems to just get worse. I have beeb on Xanax and am now ob Prozac but still does not help.

I experience bad anxiety every night. Part of it comes from severe arachniphobia and other phobias. It's become a real problem for me, and I'be considered asking my doctor for a sedative so I can get some sleep. It may only mask the problem, but medicated sleep seems to be a better alternative to no sleep at all.

Hi, I am a female young adult and since I was little I've been getting weird feelings at night. I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel like everything around me was really big and I was really small. it would like everything was about to collapse on me and suffocate me. I don't know if this would be considered a night anxiety attack or if I'm cloisterphobic. lucky I don't get it as often as I use to but every time I do get this feeling I cannot fall asleep for the entire night and it really bothers me. I've been to the doctors and they just say its stress.

I'm so sorry you have to go through this, I know how you fell because I've been there too...

There are many natural and alternative therapies for anxiety. I used to hate my medication too and suffered from awful side effects. Then I realized that the meds only hide the symptoms and do nothing to cure my anxiety disorder.

I have written a blog post about the best natural treatments for anxiety, the ones that were really helpful to me (so helpful that I'm free from anxiety for 2 years).

You can see my blog post here: http://www.natural-alternative-therapies.com/overcome-anxiety-and-panic/

Thank you for your comment, It's really good to know that someone really feels your pain in this area. My family is very understanding but they really don't know how deep this goes for me! Thanks for sharing with me your feelings and your helpful information. I will definitely on on your blog and check it out!!! Thanks again i will hang in there because i would like to help someone else out with there issues just like you are helping me!!!

Hi my name is terrie an i am just sooooo tired of suffering with anxiety. This thing seems as if it's going to take my life over completely, sometimes everything seems to bother me in the worst way!!!!! I have been taken medications for it and they just seems to make the situation worst! I AM READY FOR A NEW START!!! HELP!!!! I am so hopeful that I can be delivered from this so that I can help someone else!!